Conventionally, disk drives of the type that involve mounting a magazine storing disks in a drive and automatically playing back a disk that is withdrawn from the magazine have become widespread. Such disk drives exhibit superior operability on account of the fact that it is not necessary to perform the operations of inserting and ejecting disks one at a time each time a disk is played back.
However, because the magazine which is mounted in and detached from the disk drive needs to be sufficiently strong to protect a plurality of disks that are protected by the magazine when withdrawn to the outside, the walls of the main body of the magazine are quite thick and, as a result, the overall size of the magazine and disk drive in which the magazine is mounted increases. Further, guide grooves and rail portions are provided on the inner faces of the magazine side walls in order to remove the tray or the like protecting the disk in the magazine. When such grooves and rail portions are formed, the thickness of the magazine side walls increases further and the gap between adjacent disk holders also widens. Hence, the height dimension of the magazine increases and the disk drive in which the magazine is mounted also increases in size.
In addition, in order to withdraw and play back the disk held in the magazine, an adequate space must be provided in the disk drive and the disk drive increases in size. As in the case of an in-vehicle disk drive or the like in particular, the demand for miniaturization when the housing must be 180×50 (mm), which is known as ‘DIN size’ or 180×100 (mm), which is known as ‘double DIN size’, is high.
In order to deal with this demand, as a method of dividing the magazine, a disk drive that is able to perform playback without withdrawing the disk from the magazine by inserting a drive unit for disk playback in a space formed by dividing the magazine mounted in the disk drive has been developed (Patent Documents 1 and 2). In this disk drive, because the space for withdrawing and playing back the disk is not necessary, miniaturization of the disk drive overall can be achieved.
In addition, a disk drive in which, instead of using a detachable-type magazine, disk holders capable of storing a plurality of disks in the drive are integrated in a stacked state in the drive beforehand, and in which disks inserted via disk-slots are automatically stored in the disk holders and the stored disks can be automatically ejected has been proposed. In this disk drive, because a thick magazine and an opening and mechanism and so forth for mounting/detaching the magazine are not required, miniaturization of the drive can be implemented. The invention disclosed in Patent Document 3 in particular provides a disk holder that can be vertically divided as in the case of the magazine of the division method above and makes it possible to play back a disk without withdrawing same by inserting drive units in the divided disk holder, whereby further miniaturization is achieved.